Allotment
by peppermintyrose
Summary: Sookie considers the impact of time on her relationship with Eric. Reflective work. One shot.


_Disclaimer: All of the following is thoughtfully rearranged from the original works of Charlaine Harris. So I cannot scream MINE._

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With thanks to **TechniCal** for asking me some questions about Eric's reputation with the fangbangers and with other vampires, while I was solidifying my thoughts on this one. It helped me put it into words...and then paste it into my Word document to build on it. :D

To **Miss Construed** – he's got a permaboner all the way through this. Cause we all know Eric has _nothing_ but porntastic time in which to fuck – all night every night, he does nothing else. He doesn't have you know, a _job_ or anything. I'm sure Pam picks up the slack, and the King doesn't mind a bit. A thousand years and not a damn thing to show for it. Read the fiction she wrote for me for a humorous look on this fanfic phenomena after listening to my complaints and her nice sharp poke at it:

**WARNING! CONTAINS PEEN!** http:/www . fanfiction . net/s/5926786/1/All_About_the_Devil_Peen_Legend_of_the_Permaboner (remove the spaces to parse the url)**  
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I thought about the effects of time on our relationship, on me and on Eric, and one of the biggest gifts Eric ever gave me – which is time. He didn't have an infinite amount and neither did I. But still, time is something he gave me, as freely as he could. That was worth more than all the gifts in the world. It was worth more because it was limited. Anyone could buy things - but time was in short supply.

.*° o O 0 0 o 0 °*.

One of the things I always appreciated about Eric is that he didn't try to crowd me into a corner. When he regained his memories, he allowed me time to process that he wanted a relationship with me. He didn't pressure me. Let me tell you, having been through two wars in two nights, I wasn't feeling too chipper. On top of that, even that first time I was with him, I never had hope that he would _want _a relationship of any sort.

I'd been expecting for a while that he wouldn't really want anything of the sort - and the first words out of my mouth, the dismissal I made of what we had made that clear to him. I honestly hadn't foreseen that Eric would want to have any kind of relationship - not in the real world. A stubborn part of me held onto the fantasy until I told him all about the time he spent with me, and he reacted with coldness. After that, I didn't allow myself to hope. It hurt too much.

If he'd pushed his point that night, I would have felt bullied by him. I can't turn on a dime - rearrange how I feel about things in an instant. Eric is intimidating enough without insisting himself upon me. In the intervening time between the memories he regained, I didn't see him often, but that was okay. It gave me time to come around and want to speak to him about the whole situation. It didn't work out that way, but the heart was willing to give it a go, even if the flesh was tortured and didn't have time to have a relationship chat.

Eric had something else to do - arrange his Area in accordance with the King's wishes. In the meantime, I went from wanting to avoid talking about us to being willing to talk about us - even eager. Other women might complain that their honey was gone for so long, but it didn't worry me too much, so long as I knew he was okay. He was, and I could tell from the bond that he was having trouble maintaining his position under the new regime. That gave me time to think about what I wanted, and to get used to the idea of it being more than just sex for Eric. The idea that we could have something more. While he dealt with his vampire business and got everything in order at Fangtasia, I had time to think.

_Fangtasia._ Any time I'd walked in there, I was almost always guaranteed to find Eric. I don't think there were many times when I hadn't found Eric haunting those four walls like a ghost. A part of me was grateful that I could always find him there – at least while it was open. In a pinch, if I wanted to walk in and talk to him about the terrible day I had, I could find him there, sitting at his booth or one of the tables. If I didn't see him there, he was often off seeing me somewhere else.

I could usually reach him there by phone whenever the fancy took me as well. I don't think there was one time I had called to hear that Eric had a night off. I'd had to fight various fangbangers to get him on the phone, while they told me he was busy. If I fought with them, I could get through to him. It wasn't that they were covering the fact that he wasn't in. Once when I'd called about a vampire in the Bon Temps area, I'd been told by Clancy that Pam and Eric were out - but they didn't have the night off. I'm sure he left his bar, but it seemed that that was usually to do some business.

Eric wasn't like Bill. Bill worked from home, surviving on investments and projects like the Vampire Database. He was free to make trips into Merlotte's every night to meet me, and I could spend every single night with him. Surely, he made plenty of money, what with owning the local strip mall, but he didn't need to take more time than I did working, and his hours were fairly flexible, even while he was working on the database. When I was with Bill, I saw him every night, just because he worked from home. It was that that lead to my anaemia, and soon in our relationship I had to ask him to bite me less.

Bill had all the time in the world to spend with me – to be there for everything. If I called for him, if I needed him, he wasn't more than a couple of hundred metres away, and he was almost always at home. I could call him there if I needed him, and he was close, like the night I found Tray missing, or the night I found Gran in my house. Eric wasn't at home very often. He had Area business to attend to.

He ran Area Five, which was relatively large and covered the top of the state of Louisiana. I wasn't completely sure of the boundaries, but I took a good guess the night of the takeover. Eric had more territory than I had considered before. It was a substantial area, and I knew that there were about twenty or so vampires in that area. That's no small amount of work in itself. From each of those vampires, he had to collect the payments to the king, make sure each vampire paid the tribute that was due.

Tribute was a small thing - he also had to make sure that he kept his Area in line. Eric had to make sure that vampires were registered with him - all the new vampires - and that they understood the rules that they had. When Amelia and I found a new vampire in the Bon Temps area, when we were investigating the "lucky" factor of the insurance business in the vicinity, Bill said that an unregistered vampire had to check in, or risked a staking. Bill hauled Dustin off to be registered at Fangtasia.

On top of that, he had his own businesses, which in turn he had to pay a tithe to the king himself. Fangtasia was the largest of those – and the most lucrative. I knew he had other businesses, but I wasn't too clear on what they were. I'm sure that even if he had managers, he had to manage those managers, and have input on those businesses. Eric was required to make money, and seemed to relish it. Bill was able to take holidays, to go away to Macchu Picchu, but his business dealings weren't constantly hands on like Eric's were, and didn't need his constant intervention.

Fangtasia, which he owned with Pam, seemed to demand a lot of his time. Eric did hours in the bar himself, rather than just leave it to others. He could be found a lot of the time in a booth there, doing business. If he wasn't there, he was back in his office, doing whatever business he time he spent with me meant a lot to me, because it wasn't something he had a lot of. He had businesses, and all the other things he loved doing. He didn't have infinite time to spend with me like Bill did. Quinn too, had an intensive job, and I didn't find that the absence was too much of a rub. I saw Eric more than I saw Quinn. I knew I could find him in the bar if I was in need. Maybe the truth of it isn't that the bar demanded his time - it was that that was what he enjoyed spending time doing.

Of course, Eric spent a lot of time on his baby, Fangtasia, including marketing calendars of Area Five vampires, lines of clothing and other souvenirs for tourists. Fangtasia was doing such a roaring business that Eric had even had other vampires come and study the business themselves, to emulate it. Lyle from Alexandria came and stayed with Eric, being mentored in the business of something like Fangtasia. He'd been visiting for the fateful Dracula Night, to see how Fangtasia was run, with the idea that he could be as successful as Eric and Pam had been.

I figure that Fangtasia and Area Five had a lot of business that they had to do – the first time I worked for Eric, I met the accountant. He had other staff as well, including Belinda and Ginger, who stayed through until daytime at the bar. They had been there to get attacked by Hallow and her crew after the vampires died for the day, and had been preyed on while they were cleaning things up. Of course, he also had Bobby Burnham to co-ordinate things during the day. Bobby seemed to have a full time job getting that done, from making sure that we were all set for a flight on Anubis, or bringing me a velvet package. It was Bobby who ran messages for Eric if he didn't have enough time during the night to fulfil what he wanted to do. I can't envision Bobby taking on the job as a part time thing.

I think Eric had to do a lot of co-ordination, and I'd never noticed that he was derelict about his duties. When Andre mentioned to him that he needed to increase the payments to the Queen because of Katrina, Eric didn't bat an eyelid. He'd even offered to come and help round up looters that had pillaged the Queen's property during the Katrina disaster. I don't doubt that on top of his businesses, he had investments. I don't think he had millions of dollars – but enough for his own comfort and ease. Of course, he also had to have a buffer for if the reigning Monarch of the time decided to increase the tribute he paid.

I don't think he had an extensive bank account that meant he could do frivolous things with his money; otherwise he wouldn't have needed to ask Pam to go in with him on the bar in the first place. If Eric had extra money, he surely ploughed it back into his businesses and improved them, rather than let it sit and accrue interest. I don't think he had endless resources sitting around that weren't being put to use, and working for him.

I'm sure he was on the high definition of comfortable. Money didn't mean anything fundamental to him because he had plenty of it. I don't think he'd see money as desperately as I sometimes did. What Eric didn't have a lot of was time. Oh sure, in the grand scheme of centuries, he had forever, but in the day to day living and all of his commitments, he didn't have a lot of time. That he gave me time meant more to me than anything he could buy me.

I can't imagine he would go to such trouble if he didn't enjoy it. I thought about the amount of things that Eric did, and he was busy as a bee. In fact, I'd noticed that many vampires were. What else did they have to do with eternity, after all? They didn't have families, or retirement plans, or anything else that would occupy the long stretch of eternity. What would you find to occupy your time? There's only so much travelling that could be done, only so much of the world to see at night. You could learn new skills, but then why wouldn't you put them into action? Of course you would - and you'd make money that way.

They had to find something to do with themselves. If they weren't rogue, then they checked in with the system. The system required tithes, and after all, what else did they have to do with their time but work for money and power? That was the draw for Eric. Eric liked having power over his Area, and as Quinn said, he'd never give that up just to make me happy. I didn't want him to do that, any more that it had bothered me that Quinn was constantly travelling for his job.

The Queen had a quarter of a city block in New Orleans – all offices to deal with what businesses, both human centric and vampire business there was. She had staff and spies. The day that I had first met her in her office, Sophie Ann and Peter Threadgill had papers and work going on in front of them. The Queen had plenty to do, and a whole city block cordoned off for what she needed in running her kingdom. If that was what she did, then I had only to imagine the amount of work that Eric would do - just divide it by five and that was the business of the office at Fangtasia.

Of course, Victor had pointed out that Eric was one of the most productive Sheriffs in Sophie Ann's regime. That very fact saved his life and made the new regime willing to negotiate with him, and keep him alive to make money for them, just as they kept Bill alive as another big money maker. Money mattered a lot in the vampire scheme of things, and Eric was good at it. He enjoyed making money and furthering the cause. In fact, I think I'd go so far as to call Eric a workaholic.

.*° o O 0 0 o 0 °*.

Fangtasia provided a ready source of fangbangers for Eric and the Area vampires as well. I have no doubt that he's been with fangbangers – I've known a few of them personally, and he's told me himself. But I doubt he had time to spend with them like he did with me. After all, I was interested in the person underneath, not just an interaction with a body with fangs. I doubt Eric gave half the time to those women that he did to me. I didn't start craving being bitten, and I wasn't in love with the small element of danger offered by a vampire bar. I knew that for me, it was a big element of danger.

I don't know that spending time with fangbangers was something he did on a nightly basis. Bill had told me when I first met Eric that he had a reputation for being unforgettable in the sack – a fact that I could attest to – but that didn't mean it was a common occurrence. Jason had a reputation like that too - one where he was in lots of girls' beds - but that didn't mean that I could be guaranteed to have to track him down in bed with someone. Jason had the advantage of having a whole lot more hours in the day than Eric did. Eric's time was cut short just by what he was.

Bill told me about Eric's reputation, and it was clear to me that Eric had such a reputation for a while. There wasn't a sign up in the bar itself, informing the world at large, but supes do tend to gossip as I've found out. I doubt that Bill was talking at a phenomena that had shown up only at Fangtasia, and he probably had had a reputation for a while. They knew each other at least a little, as Eric seemed to know something about Bill's hatred for the Bellefleurs, as he asked if Bill knew I was trying to save one. So Bill knew Eric's reputation, but that made wonder where it came from and how it began.

For a start, I can't imagine a fangbanger and Bill having discussions about Eric and his abilities in the bedroom. Bill didn't seem to know through his personal contact, as neither of them seemed to swing that way. I can't imagine that a fangbanger would be silly enough to give the come on to Bill by talking about Eric either. I can't imagine Bill asking around either. I just don't think vampires were that interested in each other's sexual lives. Certainly, when Pam frightened tourists off, no vampire came up and demanded to know why it was she didn't sleep with them. I doubt they monitored humans closely enough to notice which vampire was sleeping with which human. Vampires just didn't have that sort of time on their hands.

I doubt they monitored each other either. After all, Bill and Jason told me once that there were whores who catered to vampires exclusively – if there was any shame in paying for it, then that would be a matter of great secrecy. A vampire had to find willing blood donors - the new law had passed just before Dracula Night that if a vampire fed on an unwilling human, then that vampire could be staked. They just couldn't sample the population at large whenever the desire took them - it was far too dangerous for them, and if nothing else, vampires cared for their own skin. Bill hadn't shown any shame when he'd told me about it, and he was trying to butter me up and see if I could work for the Queen. If it was shameful, I don't think he'd want that information one day making it's way back to his boss.

I thought it was a practical idea that there were willing women, who were paid and had safeguards in place. I couldn't help but think that a vampire with pent up urges was a bad thing – they'd be so much more volatile in the company of humans. A vampire who was spoiling for blood or a fight, or any of the other fundamental vampire needs wouldn't be a pushover - they'd be so much angrier. I could attest to a vampire deprived - they didn't become more controllable - they became more violent.

A vampire who had his lusts sated was probably one who would be more easily controlled. I remember that night that Bill and Eric had saved me from one of my many beatings. That night both of them had more blood than they'd had in a long time - I'd heard them talking about it. Eric looked ruddy, and Bill looked almost sunburnt. It made me wonder - if with lots of blood Eric could look healthy and almost human, it made me question why they didn't do that very often. Fangtasia had enough fangbangers to fill Eric's need to do that every night.

Maybe the danger was that they would become too complacent with their lot. They'd sit back like they'd had a huge Thanksgiving feast, and worry about nothing. After all, they lived in a society with other vampires, and couldn't afford to take their minds off staying one step ahead of their superiors. In Eric's case, he had underlings he needed to control as well. If he wasn't more careful, he could have another one in his Area like Charles Twining. I didn't want that, and Eric _definitely _didn't want that.

.*° o O 0 0 o 0 °*.

Of course, there is always the fact that our time together might be limited in the overall sense. I didn't think about that very much, beyond the fact that I knew we'd inevitably separate. Not because I wanted to, but because either way, my death would mean separation for us. If I died as I wanted to, a natural death, that would mean our separation. If I turned for Eric, that would mean separation too.

I was determined to die a natural death. I didn't want to be a vampire. Apart from all of the qualms that I had about being a vampire – and they were considerable – I had my own reasons. I didn't want to be a vampire because their world was filled with politics, fighting and power struggles. It was filled with older, stronger, richer, more powerful and crueller vampires using others who were weaker. Eric loved that sort of thing – the fighting and jockeying for power, and of course, he had some of his own as it stood now. I suppose that's why he made it a thousand years or so – he was perfectly suited to his environment.

I wasn't. As I called it the "vampire shit" had already had a negative impact on my life. I didn't want to throw myself into it wholeheartedly. I didn't want to put up with more than was absolutely necessary to spend time with him. Vampires just had way too many obligations to other vampires. Not all of them were obligations that Eric enjoyed. He spoke of needing to think quickly to stay ahead of the king. I had no reason to think that my lot would be any different. Pam didn't get to skate on her obligations just because she was connected to Eric.

Apart from the great detractions, there were reasons of my own to die as I wished, quite apart from the world of vampires. Firstly, I am Christian. I believe in the idea of a Heaven. Now, maybe some people don't, and would argue that it's the stuff of fairytales to believe that Heaven or God exist. Well, isn't that what we used to say about vampires and werewolves and fairies? That doesn't present such a compelling argument when you know for a fact that the supernatural is all around us. It's hard to believe the line that you should only believe what you can see. After all, God had his revelation a couple of thousand years ago - he told humanity he existed.

I wanted to go to my final reward. I tried to be a good person, to live up to Christian ideals. I tried not to kill people, even though I was faced with impossible choices at times. I didn't lust for revenge, and I agonised over the things that I did wrong. When Godfrey had asked me when I'd last taken Holy Communion, I'd been able to honestly tell him that I had taken it that week, a happy churchgoer. I had a good relationship with the priests in my town, to the effect that Geoff Marriot's family had been able to appeal to them to get me to talk about how he'd died outside my house, seemingly having been trying to set my house on fire.

Eric wasn't Christian at all, but I didn't ask him to convert. I didn't slip him a pamphlet to show him the light. I didn't tell him my fears that we would go on to be separated in the afterlife forever. Nor did I suggest that we continue our relationship in Heaven, and request that he become careless with his own existence to make it so in the event of my death. That wasn't something that was a part of Eric's nature. It was hardly fair that I would be the one to sacrifice something that was fundamental to me.

I suppose Eric might argue that it was my duty to stay around for him, to be here to make his time easier. He hadn't asked for immortality, and he hadn't been happy some of that time. That didn't bode so well for me - to look forward to a possible eternity of unhappiness unless I got lucky like Eric did. After all, he took a week off work while he was at my house. He wouldn't have unlimited time to spend with me again. But frankly, the idea that I owe not only my lifetime but my afterlife to someone else is appalling. I tried to be useful to people, to help, but the limit comes when too much is asked for.

It wasn't my choice to take his blood, not understanding that there was some sort of lifetime tie possible. It was Eric's choice to do that. Sure, I suppose it could be thought that because he could now feel it, I was obligated to do my best for him, and make him happy. But then, couldn't the same argument stand for Bill? I'd taken his blood as well – did that mean that I had to do what Bill wanted because of how he could feel it? I might love and care for both of them, but it didn't require me to do things just for their sake, as if I was a gift to them without my own needs and desires.

I understood the magnitude of the pain that I'd cause Eric. I'd survived my Gran's death. I'd lived through losing my parents, my cousin, and many of my supernatural friends had died. I knew what it was to lose someone you loved. But Eric seemed to care about me, and he couldn't only take the good bits. He couldn't ask me to give up everything, so that he could be happy, and he clearly didn't.

After all, I was giving up a substantial part of human life in order to be with Eric. I was giving up days spent with the one I loved, children, and all the other benefits that human couples take for granted. It was just too much to give up eternity to him. If I couldn't get everything I wanted, I don't know why it would be important for Eric to get everything he wanted. I wanted a partnership, not an unequal exchange where I gave him everything until there was none of myself left.

I wondered sometimes how much of what I'd always thought of as myself was left. Already, I'd had to come to terms with how much I was changing. It was my very real fear that I had become more of a survivalist because the supernatural world pushed me to make choices, not always good. I worried that I would become unaffected by the plight of others. If Eric insisted that I stay with him to make him happy, it would be sure that I would continue to change, and become unrecognisable.

After a period of time, I wouldn't be the Sookie he knew now. I would be changed, as they all were. Even over the short period of time I'd been in the supernatural world, I had changed. Over the course of a century, I wouldn't be the same Sookie any more. The very things that drew Eric to me may well disappear, and I could find that I stayed for him, only we weren't what each other wanted any more.

Living so long may not be good for my mental stability either – and there was no indication that Eric was completely immune either. Godfrey had given up the fight and longed for death, and Thalia didn't seem all that determined to interact with the world. Dermot it seemed had been sent crazy by the years of rejection he'd endured in the fae world. I already had a fair heap of rejection under my belt already. Being vampire, as well I knew, caused people to shun and judge you. And if my telepathy stayed, I could get a live feed twelve hours a day.

Hadley had complained about the feelings that she didn't fit in - and she only spent a short period of time as a vampire before she was killed. Of course, maybe I would last longer, maybe I wouldn't. Life in general didn't hold any guarantees. If I survived, maybe I would eventually run down, and give up. Maybe it would be faster because it was the story of my life. It took Godfrey a long time, and Thalia had no passion any more. Who knows how much that would be accelerated by my telepathy, what with the head start I had? Even worse to think that Eric had a thousand years to get that way, and I might have to watch that happen to him. Vampire bodies would get stronger, but the will to continue seemed to leave them.

I didn't seem to be a great idea to change almost everything important to me, just so that I could be what Eric wanted. After all, I accepted that he had limitations. He couldn't go out with me in the daytime, he couldn't age with me, share a meal with me. Eric had a set of his own requirements, and I accepted them without hesitation. If Eric cared about me at all, he would see how fundamental being human to me was. All my life I had wished to be more human. Just because it hadn't happened didn't mean that I had to give up what humanity I had because it would please Eric.

Eric had obviously already considered this, and had assured me that he wouldn't keep me because I didn't want to stay, and I hope that his promise didn't fail. If he'd found it too much then, when I asked him not to keep me, then he could have backed off. I'm sure that Eric, having lost one wife and some children already, knows what it is that he's doing. The fact that he's still around means that he's willing to deal with the time that we have ahead of us.

Not even human marriage was immune to one partner leaving the other alone. If I married a human man, I wouldn't have any guarantee that I would not be a widow, or that in turn I would always have him by my side. Of course, Eric had survived Aude for longer than either of them could fathom, but still, their relationship didn't hinge on the time that happened after she left him, but rather the time they spent together.

Of course, that just demonstrated the vagary that is life. Eric had watched his brother, his wife and his children die. He had survived that, he'd perserved despite the terrible blow, and remembered the tribute he'd paid them with pride. I too had seen far older and younger people die. I'd seen those who were least deserving and had done nothing wrong, die. There was no rhyme or reason to it. Death wasn't a punishment for the unworthy – it was a sure thing for all creatures I'd met on this Earth, supernatural or not. There was no guarantee that if I became vampire I'd survive as long as Eric needed me to or that he in turn would survive for my sake.

While I could understand that the bond caused him pain, then surely he knew what he was doing when he first gave me blood. If he'd wanted me to become a vampire in order to have his blood - if he'd wanted to be sure he was only giving that blood to someone who'd stick around, he might well have asked me. If he didn't ask - and let's face it, he didn't want me to know what he was doing at the time - then I don't see how that creates a debt for me to repay. I wasn't obligated to give him everything he wanted, as if my wants were nothing. Ultimately, it's my life, and my death. If I can keep nothing else for myself, I can keep that for myself. I shouldn't have to owe my afterlife to someone else as a favour, or to keep them happy.

It was the same with Gran – I knew that she was going to die before me, even excepting the way she was taken before her time. That didn't mean that I would give up the time that I did have with her in order to spare myself the pain. I was grateful for every morsel, every moment with my Gran. I didn't ask Bill to turn her for my own selfish wants and desires. To keep her around because she owed it to me. Gran had her own choice – and indeed had loved a man who lived far longer than she did. It wasn't impossible.

.*° o O 0 0 o 0 °*.

I think sometimes too, about the other long lived people that I'd known, the ones that weren't vampire. Fairy blood wasn't going to help me. It didn't keep my Aunt Linda alive longer, or protect her from the cancer that killed her. Niall told me that I had the essential spark, but I'm sure that Claudine would have told me if I was going to live forever. Surely Eric would have told me of the other humans he knew with fairy blood that existed for centuries. Indeed, Niall told me that I was fragile, mortal, breakable and short lived. If he thought I was going to be around forever, he wouldn't have used such words.

Having fairy blood didn't do me any favours though. It didn't keep me fit and healthy, it didn't make sure that the people in my family survived for a long time. If I had any powers that were active whatsoever, the place to use them would have been in a little shack in Arkansas. I've never been so desperate to fight to save myself from the fate I knew was coming. I wouldn't have any fairy abilities, beyond the ability to be really tasty to vampires, and a big fat target to enemies of my Great Grandfather. So if I was to live forever, if I could survive for a long time, then it would be as a vampire.

Oh sure, I could survive – but I'd been doing it long enough that vampires were a relief. I couldn't imagine how tired I would be if I had to do this for a long period of time. I'm sure that there would come a tipping point, a point where I lost touch with my sense of self, with my sanity. Just surviving isn't enough – not if you become unrecognisable and what you once valued was lost. If I finally went mad because I had no peace and quiet, I can't imagine how much more painful that would be for Eric. To watch my slow slide into oblivion over the course of decades would be just as bad as if I died. Maybe worse, as the solution would require him to leave me, or kill me rather than see me that way. I'm sure that if I didn't go insane with the voices in my head, eternal life with Eric wouldn't work out so well as a vampire.

That didn't look so good either – not for who I was now. Vampires changed – as did we all – with the passage of time. They didn't stay innocent and wide eyed. Already, after my contact with the supernatural world, I was changed. I'd been forced over and over to make choices I didn't particularly like having to make. I'd been forced quite a few times to choose between what was right and my own survival. To my shame, it seemed that I wanted to survive, rather than stick to my principles. Turning the other cheek didn't seem so easy when faced with a shifter with a gun. Without thought, I'd reacted – and that was only within a year of being in contact with the supernatural world.

If I lived for a long time, every piece that made me…_me _would be pared away in favour of survival. Every bit of it, and I couldn't allow myself the illusion that it would be any different. Maybe Eric understood that by seeking to preserve me, he would essentially lead me to destroy what he so loved about me. I could see it leading me down the path of becoming immune to the violence that surrounded me – just as Eric and Bill had become immune to it.

Spending all of my time with Eric wouldn't help that either. Bill had told me that vampires in nests became more vicious. Having met Malcolm, Liam and Diane, I heartily concur with that idea. They weren't in connection with humanity – and they died for what they did. That nest had encouraged them to be rough, careless and violent. Eric was certainly more violent than I was. I acted out of survival, while he acted for lesser reasons than that.

He himself had thought of threatening to hurt my family or people I loved to help him, and he'd considered letting Bill die in order to punish him for not being fast enough in retrieving me from my torturers. After a couple of decades, it would become something I'd just accept, and maybe after a while, come to relish it, thanks to my new bloodlust. While Bill and Eric were warriors of a sort when they were alive, Pam wasn't – and she changed. I doubt that the young English girl was an assassin when she was alive. Being in the world of vampires forced you to deal with violence, deal with fighting. If I was vampire, I'd need the same skills, which would inevitably lead to some callousness.

Eric hadn't been my nursemaid every minute of the night. I needed to know how to defend myself just as Pam did. Not to mention that vampires leave the nest. Sophie Ann had the special ability to keep her children with her – but that was her special gift. The fact that it was special meant that all the rest of the vampires had to leave the nest. I think sometimes that that was the reason she came after me. She could turn me and keep me as her own personal telepath for years, like the Berts. A useful servant she could tie to her forever. No other vampire had yet revealed a plan to turn me – and maybe that was just because they couldn't be sure they could keep me forever.

I'm sure that Lorena wanted to keep Bill forever, but she wasn't able to manage a century. But that didn't seem an answer, even if we could work out forever. After all – Sophie Ann had loved Andre for hundreds of years. So why make Hadley? If spending forever with someone you thought you loved was all you would ever want, then there'd be no new vampires. Sophie Ann kept Andre with her for all those years, but she still had dalliances elsewhere. Then of course, she truly seemed to love Hadley. So if the love of one person was all you needed for eternity, then surely you wouldn't be falling in love with others. There'd be no need to seek emotional support outside your original love relationship, even if you gave into the desire for something different physically.

But Eric didn't have that ability, just the regular one. Pam left him and was living in Minnesota for a while. If Eric and I were really determined, we could have the time that Bill and Lorena had – seventy years or so – and if I lived isn't that what we were looking forward to anyway? What would be the use of vamping it up, changing so fundamentally for the same amount of time anyway? I couldn't see the point of turning vampire so that I could spend eternity off doing my own things, only to reconnect with him once in a while. I could have those years just as I was without changing my fundamental nature.

Eric knew what my being human meant – it meant ageing. He'd seen a thousand years of it. He knew humans got wrinkly and old. I'd watched that happen to my Gran. Nothing put me off about it. It was just the way things were. My Gran didn't make it seem ugly or undesirable, and I really couldn't see any problem with it myself. I knew what old looked like up close. It didn't frighten me. If his concern was with my looks, youth or prettiness, well that's a pretty poor excuse for interest. If it all hinged on attractiveness, those fairies had done an excellent job of marking me and tearing me up. The ship of a perfect body has long since sailed.

I wasn't picture perfect, and while I had big boobs and blonde hair, I'm no Helen of Troy. Men do not gasp when they see me. I'm attractive, but I always feel fat and ugly next to fairies and vampires. If Eric's interest relied on looks, then he'd do much better looking elsewhere. Not at the relatively plain looking telepath in a room of gorgeous vampires. If vampires are somehow unattractive to him, then that's just poor reasoning to vamp it up so he'll be interested in me.

Maybe becoming a vampire wouldn't be necessary, just taking his blood regularly. Maybe his blood would extend my life a little – but I didn't think by much. Not without becoming a Renfield anyway. Eric didn't seem interested in that, thank goodness, but that would be the only way to ensure the blood was enough to preserve me. Of course, too much blood and I changed too much. Ever since we'd bonded, I'd changed for good. I didn't look like a teenager - time didn't reverse for me. It wasn't the fountain of youth. It could only preserve what was already there, and change what was wrong. I didn't relish continuing to change until I accidentally turned into a vampire. I had to think that that might happen. I think the likelihood was that I could take his blood – if he stayed with me – and stay healthy, but not young.

No matter how I looked at it, our time together would inevitably be cut short. As a vampire, or as a human with a little fairy blood. I wouldn't be in a continuous relationship for a thousand years. What we had together could be good, and it could endure for a time, but it couldn't withstand forever. I think the idea of spending time together, and it being good sounds just about right to me. Surely, the most important thing I could give Eric was time on my terms. If Eric can give me time every day, and squeeze me into his busy schedule, we can be content with taking my limited time on this Earth as our allotment together.


End file.
